The ground was hard but not as hard as he’d expected, and it splashed over him afterward, all but burying him. He realized Jet had steered the two of them into a snowdrift, and then darkness swallowed him.
* * * * *
“What do you mean?” Jhesrhi asked, pulling her aura of flame back inside herself and wiping at her nosebleed. “And who are you?”
“Sarshethrian,” the pale man said.
The name meant nothing to her. She glanced at Cera. The priestess shrugged to convey the same lack of recognition.
“Well, there’s a blow to my pride,” the one-eyed creature said, “but no matter. May I ask your names?”
Jhesrhi hesitated, pondering if there was a reason to refuse to answer or to lie. But Cera answered at once: “My friend is Jhesrhi Coldcreek, a wizard and officer in the Brotherhood of the Griffon,” she declared. “I’m Cera Eurthos, sunlady of Soolabax in Chessenta.”
“And unless I’m mistaken,” Sarshethrian said, “you’re both trapped here in the deathways, with scant hope of ever seeing either your sellsword company or your temple again. That is, unless we come to an arrangement.”
“No,” Cera said.
Jhesrhi frowned. “Hold on. What kind of an ‘arrangement’?”
The pale man smiled. “I’m glad one of you is sensible. Together, you wield fire and the sacred light of the Yellow Sun, and those are the ideal weapons to smite some former friends of mine. Help me pay them the wages of ingratitude, and when we’re done, I’ll return you to your own world.”
“No,” Cera repeated. “Leave us alone or take the consequences.”
Sarshethrian sighed. “I suppose I evoked this truculence by testing your abilities. But the test is over. Let’s converse like reasonable beings. I’m not asking you to kill anyone you don’t already want to kill anyway. My enemies are yours.”
“Give or take a couple who may have run away,” Jhesrhi said. “We—and our allies—just finished defeating our enemies in the Fortress of the Half-Demon.”
The pale creature chuckled. “You were meant to believe that. In truth, all your most important enemies are still alive—well, undead, but you know what I mean. They’ll pursue new designs while Rashemen sleeps, imagining itself secure, and before the thaw, they’ll bring her down.”
“If that’s true,” Cera said, “then thank you for the warning. Now leave us.”
“Cera,” Jhesrhi said, “I need to talk to you in private.”
She told the stag warriors to watch Sarshethrian. Then she and the priestess retreated to the cracked, chipped spot on the wall where they’d worked their unsuccessful divinations.
“Why are you acting this way?” Jhesrhi asked.
Cera scowled. “I don’t know exactly what that thing is. But it’s a great evil, and the sort of entity clerics of the Yellow Sun are sworn to oppose with all their strength.”
Jhesrhi glanced to make sure Sarshethrian wasn’t getting up to mischief. He wasn’t. He was just watching them with a crooked smile that reminded her momentarily of Gaedynn.
“Is he more evil than the zulkirs of the Wizard’s Reach,” she asked, “or Tchazzar? Because the Brotherhood worked for them.”
“That’s nothing to boast of,” Cera snapped. Then she took a deep breath in a visible effort to calm down. “Forgive me, Jhesrhi. I don’t look down on the Brotherhood for anything it’s done. You know that. But there’s a difference between serving even the wickedest human being and an undead or a fiend. Demons and devils are nothing but evil in a way mortals never can be. When you look at Sarshethrian, don’t you feel the difference?”
“Of course,” Jhesrhi said. “It makes my guts cramp. But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know how to get out of here. Do you?”
Cera hesitated. “You’re a master wizard, and I’m the high priestess of my temple. We’ll figure it out.”
“I’m a master elementalist,” Jhesrhi said. “I couldn’t open a way out of Shadow when I was stuck in it before, and you’ve never mentioned being an experienced traveler of the planes. There’s no guarantee we can do it, and certainly none that we can do it quickly. What if Rashemen fell to the undead because you were too squeamish to do what’s necessary to get back there and warn everybody? Wouldn’t that be the real sin against Amaunator?”
Cera sighed. “When did you become so glib?”
“I’m not. I’m just talking sense. If you won’t bend for the Rashemi, how about Aoth? He’s lost in here too.”
And Cera loved him. As did Jhesrhi, for that matter, although not in the same way. To her, Aoth was the savior who’d rescued her from a hellish captivity and been her friend and mentor ever since.
“All right,” the sunlady said. “If Sarshethrian will help us find Aoth, I’ll agree to the bargain.”
* * * * *
With the folding vanes extended from its hull, the Storm of Vengeance resembled a dragon gliding in the morning sky, and like a dragon, the vessel rained destruction on the berserkers and stag warriors on the snowy ground beneath it. Death came in bursts of foul-smelling smoke and barrages of hailstones hard and sharp as arrows.
Vandar stared up at the skyship. It wasn’t any fear of death that held him transfixed, but rather, horror at his catastrophic misperception. Mario Bez and his sellswords were the prophesied threat from the air, not Aoth, Jet, Cera, and Jhesrhi.
Now that it was too late, it was all so clear. Well, most of it. He still couldn’t fathom what had brought the Halruaan mercenaries north to the Fortress of the Half-Demon when they weren’t even supposed to know about the Griffon Lodge’s expedition.
Exhausted and in many cases wounded, the brothers of the lodge and their stag-man allies nonetheless fought back, sometimes struggling up out of litters to stand with their comrades. Javelins and arrows flew up at the winged ship with its horned and bare-breasted she-demon figurehead. The former fell short. A few of the latter arced high enough, but actually hitting any of the tiny figures on deck was an all but impossible shot.
The folk on the ground needed magic to fight magic, and perhaps they would have had it … if Vandar hadn’t turned his back when he heard Cera crying for help in the maze of dungeons beneath the Fortress.
But Vandar had, and so he reached down inside himself for his rage. That preternatural ferocity would do nothing to help him reach the foes aboard the skyship. The cowardly scum might even find it comical. But he was the master of a berserker lodge, and he meant to die like one.
The fury welled up, and then everything exploded in a dazzling flash. The world seemed to jump, and the next thing he knew, he was sprawled in the snow.
Dazed, the rage knocked out of him, he lifted himself on one elbow and beheld the twisted, smoking forms of half a dozen of his brothers. Someone aboard the Storm of Vengeance had hurled a thunderbolt or some similar arcane attack. Vandar had been just far enough away from the point where it struck to escape death.
He looked around and saw that most of his comrades were dead. The aerial warship had passed overhead and was coming about for a second pass at those who were left.
He heaved himself to his feet, brandished the red spear over his head, and willed the rage to return. Then, at his feet, a voice croaked, “No.”
The thunderbolt had burned away most of the speaker’s beard and hair and charred his features black. Still, Vandar recognized Raumevik, who’d once tutored him in the mysteries of the lodge. No one would have blamed the venerable old man if he’d stayed warm by his hearth instead of marching off to one more war. But Raumevik insisted on accompanying his brothers, and it had brought him to his death.
“Don’t call the anger,” Raumevik said. “Don’t stay here and throw away your life. Run!”
Those were the last words Vandar would have expected to hear a celebrated berserker speak, and he had no idea how to answer. He simply gaped in amazement.
“You don’t have to let the cowards win,” the old man said through gritted teeth. “You can avenge the
lodge. But only if you live!”
Vandar felt a sort of wordless psychic urging from the red metal spear and sword he’d taken from the fey mound. The enchanted weapons too, wanted him to survive to seek revenge.
He turned to the few berserkers and stag warriors who were still on their feet. “Run!” he bellowed, waving his spear in the hope that the fey, who didn’t understand human speech, might nonetheless take his meaning. “I swear, we’ll kill them another day, when our weapons can reach them!”
The stag men bolted, the bells in their antlers chiming. A couple of humans did too, but the rest were lost to snarling, glaring bloodlust, biting the rims of their shields and gashing their cheeks and arms in impotent rage.
Given time, their lodge master might have calmed them, but there was no time. Despising himself for it, Vandar ran and left them to their fate.
His feet crunched in the snow, and the cold air rasped in and out of his nose. Behind him, magic roared and crackled, and men screamed.
Glancing around, he saw that at least those who’d fled were spreading out, which meant the skyship couldn’t chase everyone at once. Surely at least one person would escape to denounce Bez’s treachery.
Suddenly, Vandar sensed—or maybe it was the red weapons warning him—danger over his head. He threw himself down in the snow, rolled, and glimpsed four hooves galloping in empty air. The churning equine legs extended from a hairless torso mottled with sores.
Then the flying creature hurtled past. As Vandar scrambled to his feet, the creature plunged to earth and wheeled to face him.
Vandar supposed his assailant was the netherworld’s notion of a centaur. The upper body sprouting where a horse had its neck was essentially human except for the long horns curling up from the brow. Spiky plate armor protected the manlike parts and the equine back, and the demon gripped a lance in both hands.
Vandar heard more screaming. Although he didn’t dare look away from the demon in front of him to check, he inferred there were more of the fiends. One of the mages aboard the skyship had summoned them to catch survivors on the ground faster than the vessel could come about and pursue.
The demon centaur charged.
Vandar poised the red spear as though he meant to hold his position. Then, when the point of the lance, engraved with a rune and shimmering with enchantment, was just an arm’s length from his chest, he sprang to the side. As the fiend thundered by, he thrust the spear at its flank.
He was trying for the exposed leprous flesh of its belly, but he aimed too high. Fortunately, the crimson weapon punched right through the creature’s armor.
The demon’s forward progress ripped the spear from Vandar’s hands as it plunged by. The creature staggered a step, and he hoped to see it fall, but it recovered instead and whirled around. Snarling words in some grating Abyssal language, it dropped the lance and yanked a flail loose from the place where it hung on its armor.
Meanwhile, Vandar snatched out the red sword, and he and the centaur fiend began to circle.
Vandar told himself to be patient and wait for an opportunity, even though he needed to finish this fight before the skyship drew near. He likewise instructed himself to resist his natural impulse and not go berserk, lest he find himself incapable of flight when the combat was through.
The flail whirling through the air, its chain links clattering, the demon rushed him. Vandar ducked and felt the breeze as the knobbed iron ball whipped over his head. He leaped up and thrust at the fiend’s upper body. His point punched through its breastplate to pierce the spot where human beings carried their hearts.
Vandar assumed that was the end of it, especially when the manlike part of the creature convulsed. But the horse half reared to batter with its front hooves.
Caught by surprise, he nonetheless tried to wrench himself aside. One hoof grazed his temple anyway, and stunned, he reeled backward. Mincing on its hind legs, the hellish centaur pursued to pummel him some more.
Vandar roared his dazed slowness away, got his feet under him, and cut. The red sword sheared into the spot where an earthly horse kept its heart. The demon toppled forward, and Vandar jumped out of the way to keep it from slamming down on top of him.
He studied it for a moment to be sure it was finished. It was. He grinned with a satisfaction that lasted only for as long as it took him to look around.
Just as he’d feared, the fight had taken too long. The Storm of Vengeance had finished coming about, and it was flying straight at him.
Seeking cover, he cast around and found nothing that would hide him from hostile eyes or protect him from a fiery blast or a burst of acid. He jerked the red spear out of the demon’s side and resumed running across the snow-covered scrubland.
A thumping sound and a truncated shriek tempted him to glance over his shoulder, but he didn’t need to look to know the skyship was steadily closing the distance. It could fly faster than any man could run, even someone with enchanted weapons lending him strength and endurance.
So maybe Vandar should turn, give himself over to the fury, throw his spear at his enemies, and die like a berserker after all. Maybe perishing alongside the lodge brothers he’d led so disastrously was preferable to the guilt and grief of surviving.
He was still considering it when he glimpsed a different whiteness in the vista before him, a flat, gleaming ribbon winding its way through the snowy, uneven ground and the leafless brush with its burden of icicles. It was a frozen tributary of Lake Ashane, a largish stream or small river he recalled crossing on the march north.
He raced onto the ice and stabbed it repeatedly with the spear. Every thrust penetrated, but each jabbed only a little hole, not the big one he required. Meanwhile, the winged shadow of the Storm of Vengeance came gliding over the snow, and he caught the voices of the officers and crew calling to one another. It sounded like they were enjoying the massacre.
A missile thudded down in the stone beside the little river, then burst into green vapor that streamed out in all directions. Vandar closed his eyes, held his breath, and asked his griffon totem for strength.
None of it helped very much. The toxic fumes still seared him outside and in but only for a heartbeat. Then, finally, a sizable piece of ice shattered beneath him, and he plunged through the opening.
The water washed away the poison clinging to his skin, cooled the burning sting of it, and for an instant, felt wonderful. Then a shock of bitter cold pierced him to the core.
Someone—poor Raumevik, perhaps—had once told Vandar that if a man fell through the ice, he could find an inch or two of air caught between the frozen surface and the water beneath. He floundered upward, and sure enough, there it was. Face tilted up, he gasped some in and got water along with it. He coughed the frigid liquid out and inhaled again.
He struggled to hold his body in the same life-saving attitude as the current carried him along. Meanwhile, the chill numbed him and leeched his strength. It would kill him if he stayed submerged for long, but if he emerged too soon, the sellswords would spot him and drop more lethal magic on his head.
The worst thing about it was that he had no way of telling how far from the skyship he’d traveled. The thick ice above his face was more opaque than otherwise, dusted with drifts of snow.
Soon, though, his ongoing debilitation reached a point where the location of his human foes became irrelevant. Instinct screamed that if he didn’t escape the river immediately, it was going to kill him.
There were tangles of fallen branches on the bottom of the river. They’d bumped and snagged his legs as the current swept him downstream. He waited until he felt the next, then groped and fumbled at it with his feet. They caught in it to anchor him in one place.
Then he attacked the ice as he had before, jabbing it with the spear, but this time, the thrusts were so feeble that most of them didn’t even poke through. He’d waited too long to try getting out. Which meant he was failing his murdered lodge brothers again by letting Bez’s perfidy go unpunished.
Long cracks snaked through the ice, and then chunks of it tumbled down around him. He tossed the spear up out of the hole, caught the edges, and strained to haul himself out of the water.
For a moment, the task was beyond him. Then, grunting and gasping, he dragged himself up onto his belly and lay shuddering, too spent even to raise his head and see if the skyship was close by or not.
* * * * *
Crouching inside the frigid tomb, his neck throbbing, Aoth Fezim gritted his teeth against the pain and reached out with his thoughts. Jet! Talk to me! I need you.
But the griffon didn’t answer, and it was conceivably just as well. Aoth could feel that his familiar was alive but too deeply unconscious for his master’s psychic call to rouse him. He was also suffering pain so fierce that a trace of it even tainted that profound slumber. Something had hurt him badly, and he likely needed to rest.
Still, if they couldn’t communicate, Aoth had no way of finding out if Cera and Jhesrhi had escaped the otherworldly maze, knowing the current situation at the Fortress of the Half-Demon, or discovering whether anything else was happening in Rashemen. He slammed his fist down on his knee, and sharper pain stabbed through his neck. It made tears spill from his eyes.
The pain also reminded him that he needed to address his own immediate problems. Otherwise, nothing happening hundreds of miles to the north was likely to matter, at least not to him.
He could tell his neck was getting worse. Pain jabbed and scraped at him with every move he made. He wouldn’t be able to do anything else to help himself until he obtained healing, and the only place to seek it was inside the keep a stone’s throw away from the crypt.
He felt singularly unready to go exploring. He’d expended too much of his magic fighting the undead in Rashemen. Even the petty enchantments bound in his tattoos, on which he generally depended to stave off pain, chill, and fatigue, were inert.
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